SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/23/2019
11:06 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Sacrificial Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
5:25b
Message of the
verse: “and gave Himself up for her.”
I stated in our last SD that we would begin this SD by
talking about the Good Samaritan, and his expression of love to the man who was
beaten and robbed was based on his own generous character and also on that man’s
severe need, as the man that the Samaritan who was attending to was probably
gone to be left for dead if the Samaritan had not come along. It really did not matter whether the man
deserved his care as this did not really enter into the picture that Jesus was
painting with His Words. Jesus loved His
disciples’ feet, and the reason was because He loved them and it was His desire
to serve them, and this was not because they deserved even that most menial of
services. Jesus loved them despite their
selfishness, pride, ambition, self-indulgence, jealousy, or even their
fickleness. There is no doubt that Jesus
felt great sorrow and pain because of their continued selfishness after three
years of being with Him in intimate fellowship.
Just a little more thought on this and that is that we know that God
hates and cannot tolerate sin, and yet Jesus lived with sinful people the entire
time that He was on this earth, and that to me is amazing. Jesus did not love and serve them on the
basis of those feelings but on the basis of His own loving nature, so it was
not so much the feelings that He had for His sinful disciples, as it was
because of His loving nature. Another
reason He washed their feet was to give an example of what every disciple of
His is commanded to do. “If I then, the
Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s
feet” (John 13:14). And then a little
while latter Jesus said “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one
another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John.
13:34).
John MacArthur writes “Where there is need, love acts,
with no consideration or deserving or worth (cf. 1 John 3:16). God’s love is its own justification; and when
we love as He loves, our love is also its own justification, because it is like
His love. God did not love the world and
send His own Son to redeem it because it was worthy of that love. It was totally unworthy of His love; and when
His love came in human flesh, the world despised it, rejected it, and threw it
back in God’s face. Yet Jesus Christ, as
God’s incarnate love, did not flinch or turn away or become resentful. He preached and taught and bled and died,
because that is what divine love demanded.
“Love does whatever needs to be done and does not count
cost or merit. It reaches out and helps,
leads, teaches, warns, or encourages.
Whatever is needed it gives.
Whether its help is received or rejected, appreciated or resented, love
continues as long as the need continues.”
Now if the Christian who loves because of what other
people may do for him or if he loves because they are attractive, they do not
love as God loves. This is true of the
Christian husband, for if he only loves his wife because she is attractive or
pleasing temperament he is not loving as Christ loves. The husband who loves his wife for what she
can give him loves as the world loves, not as Christ loves. The husband who loves his wife as Christ
loves His church gives everything he has for his wife, and this includes his
life if necessary.
Quotation from “Love in
Action” for today: “Beloved, if God so
love us, we also ought to love one another:
No one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been
perfected in us. Bu this we know that we
abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit, (1 John
4:11-14).”
8/23/2019 11:34 PM
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